Open access publishing is creating quite a buzz in science, but will these new …

Share this story

The past few years have seen a small revolution occuring in the field of scientific journals. The advent of the Internet has meant that instead of having to pick myself up and walk over to the library to find a reference, I can now go straight from PubMed to to an electronic copy of the reference I want, either as a PDF or an HTML file. But, along with that is the need for the library to have an subscription to the journal in question, and that doesn't come cheap—a site license for a journal can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whilst that might not be too bad for an institution with plenty of endowments, for the less well off, especially abroad, it can be a serious impediment to academic research.

As the software industry has the open-source movement, so the publishing industry has the open-access movement. Pioneered by journals such as Public Library of Science and those from BioMedCentral, these journals allow free online access to readers, amongst a host of other advances. I'm a great fan of this new paradigm in science publishing, and I'm not alone; the NIH wants all research that it funds to be availiable, within six months of publication, on PubMed Central. Some traditional journals, such as JCI, are already allowing open access to their content. Now, a new study (PDF) sponsored by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and HighWire Press has looked at just how these new journals are faring:

"Discussion of Open Access tends to be strong on rhetoric but short on facts," said Sally Morris, chief executive of ALPSP. "But we now have, for the first time, a substantial body of data about different forms of Open Access publishing, and a baseline of comparison with traditional subscription publishing."

The study parameters were defined by the co-sponsors but the research and analysis were conducted by Kaufman-Wills Group, LLC, independent consultants. The study authors found a significant number of journals using various open-access approaches, both by traditional publishers and new entrants into the field. It noted the extent to which traditional publishers have been experimenting with open access approaches, such as offering articles freely to all after a set period of time.

"The Open Access movement has compelled traditional subscription journals to respond," said Mark Frankel, co-director of AAAS's Project on Science and Intellectual Property in the Public Interest (SIPPI), which helped fund the study.

But the new study makes clear that some of the full open-access journals could face significant financial pressures over the longer term. It said a number of them gave "disarmingly naïve responses" when asked about their business models.

Among the journals surveyed, financial results were not as strong for full open access journals, with 41 per cent reporting shortfalls and 24 per cent breaking even. Among the journals surveyed that do not provide full open access, 81 per cent of the HighWire and AAMC journals reported a profit and 75 per cent of the ALPSP journals were in the black.

The study found widespread recognition by the publishing industry on the need for better ways to provide broad and timely access to research findings.

"We hope that this report will aid further discussion of alternative publishing models by adding to the body of evidence-based research towards the goal of wide access to research findings in the public interest," said John Sack, director of HighWire Press. Sack's organization, based at the Stanford University Libraries, serves as an online host for many established science journals.

I for one hope that journals like BioMedCentral and PLoS succeed. As long as they get a decent stream of good quality research to publish, that hope might well become a reality. This has some bearing on the articles you will find here too. Wherever possible, when covering a story I will link to open access coverage of it, but that isn't always possible. Nature and Science, the two largest gorillas in the tree that is scientific publishing, both restrict their content to subscribers, so unfortunately there will be instances where not everyone will be able to view the source material.